Sheffield University: No opening date for £86m 'superlab' shelved over £50m funding crisis

The Central Teaching Laboratories scheme goes before Sheffield City Council’s planning committee on Tuesday, January 14.

But even if it is approved, university chiefs say they will pause the start for a year and are unable to say when it will be complete. The original opening date was September 2027.

The five-storey superlab on Upper Hanover Street is set to have two 300-student laboratories for the Faculty of Science, the Medical Teaching Unit, the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences and facilities for medicine, dentistry and health.

The one-year pause comes after the university revealed it was facing a £50m financial shortfall over the next two years, partly due to 2,200 fewer international students paying fees of up to £29,000-a-year.

A university spokesperson said the superlab remained a “strategic priority.”

They said: "The start of the project will be paused by one year, to be reviewed at regular intervals in the context of the university’s finances.

“The development of the CTL remains a strategic priority as in order to attract the best students in a range of subjects we need to offer modern, world-class facilities. This is simply a temporary pause."

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A Sheffield City Council report states the need to remove eight mature trees is a “negative” but “following negotiation” the university has agreed to plant eigh street trees and 46 others in the proposed new pocket park and the wider university campus.

It concludes: “Overall, and taking account of the presumption in favour of sustainable development, it is concluded that the benefits outweigh the harm and conditional approval of planning permission is recommended.”